Modern Basics: Easy Quilts to Fit Your Budget, Space, and Style, by Amy Ellis, has 14 different quilt designs, mostly pieced.

These are excellent projects for beginner quilters, who will appreciate the easy, yet effective designs.

More advanced quilters will also enjoy the geometric patterns, several of which create optical illusions with their fabric choices and careful placement.

These patterns lend themselves to the large "home decor" prints that are so popular today. There are also several projects in the book that use solid cottons, which are also seeing a resurgence in the marketplace.

Amy gives advice on basic quiltmaking with explanations of the various tools involved and the process from cutting to quilting which would be essential for beginning quilters. I especially like her safety advice about rotary cutters - one of my bugbears (close that cutter!). ( )

Most of the quilts in Modern Basics are easy squares and triangles. Although the fabrics in the book would not be my choice of fabrics, her choice of colors really shows off the designs so that a new quilter will be able to understand the importance of the light, medium, dark choices. For example, the Wind Power quilt that has three fabrics. The pink fabric just pops out of the quilt. I like the Tumbling Cubes quilt the best. It is a plain quilt with small bright colorful accent squares. I also like the 123! Its three off center strips sewn into a square would be perfect for a brand new quilter.

There are no skill levels listed, but I would say that most of the quilts are fairly easy and the skill levels would be absolute beginner, easy, and advanced beginner. Honestly, I would recommend them to any quilter that would like a fast, easy quilt to make.

I like the basic quilting information in this book. It contains more detailed instructions than I usually see. There is good information on rotary cutting, squaring up, piecing and even using your sewing machine walking foot.

Even as an experienced quilter, I will keep this one on my permanent shelf. ( )